ACKWORTH ARCHIVES

Joseph Frankl (AOS 1946 - 1950) passed away in Israel on 21st of November 2021. Having escaped with his mother from his home in Czechoslovakia, he hid from the Nazis for three years in Hungary, surviving the siege of Budapest. He lost many members of his extended family in the Holocaust.

The Ackworth he arrived at in 1946 must have seemed like an oasis of calm after his experiences and the things he had witnessed in war torn Europe. He wrote about these in his autobiography “Under the Castle”. He summarised his Ackworth schooldays thus:

“Four wonderful, carefree years came to their end. Years filled with rich, rewarding experiences. We’d been taught honour, respect, friendship, how to interact with other people……..I’d entered Ackworth with trepidation, a hardened survivor coming from a vastly different world, a young boy who spoke poor English, a foreigner in so many senses. I left Ackworth confident and poised. I’d caught up; achieved much, both academically and socially: I had become a well-adjusted Englishman. I owed my school a huge debt.”

Another Old Scholar who arrived at Ackworth after the war was Coryn Clarke (AOS 1946 - 1948). Coryn’s photo album, letters, diary and cuttings have recently been donated to the archives. They present a truly remarkable story.

“Punishment was very severe if you broke the Japanese rules. By Christmas ‘44, conditions were deteriorating, clothes were getting shabbier and shabbier, anything that could be saved was made into smaller garments, but it became colder and colder in the winter. Rations got smaller and smaller. We wore everything in bed and we didn’t care.”

They were finally liberated by the Americans. Coryn returned to Britain in 1946 and she joined Ackworth School where her older sister had been a pupil before the war.

Ackworth must have seemed a world away from her two and a half years of captivity.